Familial temporal lobe epilepsy in the 19th century

To draw attention to a publication showing that familial temporal lobe epilepsy had been described in 1895, considerably earlier than 1994, usually thought to be the date of the original account of the disorder METHODS: Examination of the contents of Sir James Crichton-Browne's Cavendish lecture on 'Dreamy mental states' that was published in the Lancet in mid-1895 RESULTS: At a time when the clinical phenomena that later became associated with the idea of temporal lobe epilepsy were beginning to become known, Creighton-Browne described the presence of this disorder in members of four consecutive generations of a British family throughout the course of the 19th Century CONCLUSIONS: There is evidence that the genetic abnormality responsible for familial temporal epilepsy had probably appeared considerably earlier than hitherto thought.